


Hang the Moon in the Northern Sky

by write_light



Series: Wolf Black [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 12 Days of Sterek, Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Established Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Mild PTSD Flashbacks, Royal Hales, Royal Stiles Stilinski, Wolf Kingdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 02:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16925037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_light/pseuds/write_light
Summary: “Do you know what the moon is? Are yousure? Because the wolves know. They paid the price to keep it in the sky - for all of us.”Sterek AU with King Stiles, Prince Derek, two kids who won’t go to sleep, and a scary nanny with an even scarier bedtime story. It’s definitely not appropriate for the little ones. Or for Stiles, as it turns out.





	Hang the Moon in the Northern Sky

**Author's Note:**

> A follow-up fic to “Wolf Black”, which may illuminate some of the mythology and references.

With her bony fingers and long nails guiding the matchstick, she lit the lantern.  There was no fireplace here to warm things. **  
**

“Where is Derek?” the boy asked, feeling like the answers she gave brought Derek no closer to home.

“On a mission, you know that,” muttered Nanny Shebal, unconcerned.

“Where is he right now? Is he safe?” his sister asked, with the specificity and tone of voice that came from being two years older than her brother.

“He has the King with him, so I think they'll do quite well. Now you two go off to sleep. See, the wolfpup dozes already.” _Wolfpups in the house, unclean and unnatural,”_ she thought as she flicked wolf hairs from her dense brown robes.

“I’m _not_ tired,” the boy yawned as Shebal tucked him into his warm blankets, poking his neck with her icy fingers. He squealed.

“We’re not sleepy,” said his sister. “You’re just trying to get us to go to sleep so you can get on with your other chores.”

“You two are all the chore anyone could handle. Such a spoiled pair,” she blustered, no longer to herself. She was making a show of tucking them in even tighter, but she wasn’t leaving. _You may have chased Maniha away inside of a month, but you won’t be rid of me so easily. I know how to outwit you._

“Tell us a story,” the girl continued. “Tell us how Stiles met Derek.”

“ _King_ Stiles was king then as he still is, and you’ll call him King Stiles. That he adopted you two is no excuse for disrespect.”

The little boy’s lip quivered.

Nanny Shebal looked at him with what passed for fear on a puckered face.

“If you make him cry, they’ll never let you stay on as Nanny,” the girl reasoned.

“You want stories?”

It was more threat than offer, but the boy was already oblivious in his happiness.

“YES YES YES!” he shouted, bouncing in the little bed.

"Hush, then, and learn something to impress Prince Derek when he returns."

Shebal gathered her robes and white winter overcloak tight around her for all their meager warmth. _I am forever chilled even in what they call a ‘palace’._

The children, raised in the icy dark of the Northern Kingdom and not at all cold, quieted down enough that Shebal could tell them a story.

***

From farther south than Stiles and even farther to the west, Shebal was a substantial woman with substantial gifts; storytelling was clearly not one. The children fidgeted while she repeated the Northern tales like a doctrine, as well as many lies about the South’s past under “Evil” King Stiles, all in her unvarying tone.

Boredom made them restless, not closer to sleep. Shebal straightened her back and that got their attention; she stood abruptly, oddly tall when viewed from their low pillows.

 _Very well_. _If you won’t sleep, then let me give you reason to stay awake. The northern moon brings no heat to your world, and you shall know why._

“Do you know what the moon _is_? Are you sure?”

They gulped.

 She closed her eyes and breathed deep the cold dry air. It parched her throat, roughened her voice just the right amount.

"They say… that the moon is but a lantern,” she rasped, “hung high on the highest limb of the tallest tree in the northern forests…"

The small lantern on the side table flickered ominously but no draft of wind blew. Shebal missed this but the children could not, and exchanged a glance. The girl was thrilled, but her brother was worried. Shebal continued.

“The lamp lights the night and guards the passages, to stop the dark from getting _all the way_ in-“

“It’s not a lamp. It’s a ball,” the boy interrupted, as certain as he was five, and received a harsh look from Shebal’s bulging eyeballs.

“The moon is not what you see with your eyes. You are blinded by its magic.”

“The moon was there since...since our great-great-hundred-times-grandfather,“ the boy argued back.

“There are pictures of it in the painting gallery, much older than this castle even,” agreed his sister, equally confident in her facts.

“That was before the darkest time,” Shebal said, warding off evil from both sides with her ancient gestures. She let her voice drop to a whisper then.

“When the black things returned to our world, devouring light, they overran your Wolf kingdom, threatening the sea-people in the east, the drylands of the west where witches rule and reject the shifting, … down even to the southern kingdom where King Stiles’ proud human ancestors ruled.”

The children were silent now, wide-eyed. The girl, barely seven, had lost some of her bravado, but not all of it.

“There would be memories-“

“Whose memories?” asked Shebal, and waited pointedly.  “Who do you know from that age? Barely a wolf survived. My own grandparents were driven to ruin and servitude. The alliance that brought the magic mirror to King Stiles’ castle was a desperate one, made to save the north from-”

She paused for breath, and for effect.

***

“But look at you, trembling,” she said, her voice all kindness. “I don’t want to scare you precious little ones,” she swore, but her large eyes were unblinking.

The little boy pulled his blanket higher up, covering his nose.

“Are you brave enough for me to continue?”

The little girl nodded, despite a pleading whine from her brother.

"They say wolves howl at the moon not because it's a moon, or even a lantern, but because it is a wolf's soul…trapped…lost." Her tone was guileless and sweet, which made it all worse. “And I haven’t seen the moon in so long. Have you?”

“I- I haven’t seen it today, but it is there,” the girl insisted.

“It isn’t,” Shebal countered with complete certainty. “Why do you think you have a window to the northern sky?” she asked, grabbing the drapes that kept the cold at bay. “To see the lantern hanging there of course, to watch out for the darkness returning!”

She flung the drapery aside in a sudden scraping of rings against rod.

“Where is your moon?”

The young girl blinked.

“Is the glass in your way?” Shebal asked, no longer kind, and flung open the windows on their screeching hinges, letting in a blast of icy wind.

The girl gasped and her brother pulled the blanket over his eyes. Their window was a vast hole of inky blackness; their watchful moon was indeed gone.

Far down the hall, a door slammed open, making the girl yelp. Even Shebal looked unnerved and shoved the window back into place. Loud footsteps could be heard striding across the stone floor toward their door.

King Stiles burst into the bedroom, straight for his children with a wide smile. He hugged them tight, first his little girl, then the lump of blanket that was his son.

“Where has my boy gone?” Stiles asked, his smile wide then slipping. He looked back at his daughter, who was reaching out for him with both hands.

Shebal stayed in a curtsey so deep and silent she might as well have been furniture.

“What’s up, little pup?” Stiles asked his daughter.

“She took the moon,” the girl said, her voice uncharacteristically soft and unsure.

Shebal remained low and unmoving.

“Stand. None of this obeisance here, not now,” Stiles demanded. “What have you told them?”

“Only about the hanging - of your moon.”

Stiles’ right eyebrow rose, a habit he’d picked up from Derek.

“You-  That’s a story for when they’re much older.”

“We tell it to our children at your boy’s age-“

“ _We_ do not,” Stiles said.

“Where were you, Daddy? Were you in the northern wild?” his daughter asked, braver in his presence.

“Where’s the moon?” came a muffled voice. “And where’s Derek?” His son’s eyes appeared above the edge of the blanket. The worry in his child’s voice awoke an unpleasant memory.

* * *

* * *

Darkness everywhere, deeper than before.

Themma's small body was motionless in his arms, and so cold. Stiles pulled her inside his coat and staggered toward the only thing he could still see – a purplish afterglow of the lantern over a rapidly fading Derek.

Stiles felt his way forward on his fingers and toes, certain he was heading toward Derek. Instead, he crashed face first into a tree trunk. He felt wide to the right and then heard it. It was no sound a wolf made, or a human. It rose far over the ridge like a hungry, all-consuming mouth pulling in the air and the trees and the rocks.

Stiles scrabbled right, and right again, holding Themma against his chest and reaching out for the one thing that he needed before death came to all of them.

  
Leather. Muscle.

"Derek!”

He set Themma at Derek's side and grabbed Derek's face out of the black night. He swore he could see Derek now, could imagine every line of cheek and jaw, the heavy-lashed eyes asleep. _Just asleep._ He's so cold, colder than this fucking kingdom of his.

* * *

* * *

 

Stiles shook his head, not sure how long he’d been silent.

“Derek’s downstairs, making sure everything is ok after - after our mission.”

The boy relaxed.

“The moon, _as we all know_ ,” Stiles said slowly, turning back to Shebal, “is in the sky where it has always been, growing and shrinking and always returning, like Derek and I always return to you.”

Shebal made a rude snort but stifled it quickly under the King’s glare.

“Shebal was only telling you the legend of the Northern Lantern. But that’s too scary.”

“Then you tell it,” the girl insisted, calmer now.

“Well, I’ll… I’ll brighten it, a bit,” Stiles stammered, wishing he could steal away back to Derek right then. He tried to push back the memory of the darkness that touched him in the mountains, but it was too strong.

 

* * *

* * *

The roaring from beyond the mountains was closer now, and the dark spilled through the valleys, as slowly and inevitably as night fell.

Stiles could see it even against the moonless, starless night. It was _so dark_ , it stood out. _Blacker is the right word, Themma._

The sound of death approaching was matched by a roar from behind them and Stiles realized he could see the darkness because there _was_ still light. He turned to see dozens of bright eyes, each pair the eyes of a wolf as it raced through the forest toward them.

"Peter-" said Derek, and Stiles wheeled around.

"I can see you, Derek!" He kissed Derek again, hard. "We're safe!"

"No…, we’re not."

* * *

* * *

 

Stiles was shaking now. Shebal huffed again but stood her ground and waited. The children were watching him, wide-eyed.

Stiles began his version, falsely cheerful.

“The moon is a magic lantern, guarding the northern gates of our world. It flickers as the days pass but the flame always grows bright again. Uncle Peter was the last to hang it.”

“ _King_ Peter _,_ ” Shebal corrected by way of explaining, “the king before King Stiles took over-“

“The one who allowed you to enter this court,” Stiles reminded her.

 

* * *

* * *

The largest wolf, brown with black tips, moved toward Stiles. 

"Peter," Stiles said, turning on his knees to face this monster.

Wolf Peter looked at Themma, then at Stiles and his eyes flared red. He snarled at Stiles and lunged for him, knocking him back toward the darkest part of the hillside, then turned on Derek.

He shifted into half-human form, naked on the freezing slope, and stared down at Derek, furious.

"So like your father, so easily following your heart," he taunted, "out of our kingdom, away from our kind. And so easily fooled, like our grandfather when that first witch came. Now you'll do what we MUST do to keep the North safe."

Turning to look quickly at Stiles' horrified expression, he added "Even your kingdom, Stiles, will be safe when Derek finally _dies_.” To Derek he said softly, "It's a small price to banish darkness and keep our moonlight. We'll all howl for you, nephew.” He slid a claw down Derek's cheek.

* * *

* * *

 

"Someone took the lantern down, you see. Someone took the soul," Shebal continued her version. “And when King Peter died in the northern mountains-"

“Lighter, Shebal, lighter,-“ Stiles smiled weakly, fighting to soak in the innocent normalcy of his warm, living children.  _Hurry up, Derek._

They were watching nervously, sensing tension and adult lies. Both children could hear Stiles’ heart picking up speed.

"This is no fairy tale - you're, you're trying to frighten them is what you're doing,” Stiles stammered out. 

Settled between his beloved children, in the safest room in the castle, he saw only darkness around him again. The memory of that battle, his first, in his first week in the wolves' kingdom, had burned deep into his soul, full of death and blood. It would not rest so easily now that Shebal had stirred it up.

 

* * *

* * *

The smaller wolf sniffed around Themma's cold body, whined, and Peter cuffed it. Thom sank his fangs into Peter's hand, and he flung the boy off, tossing him twenty feet through the air  to land on bare rock with a sickening crack. Thom shifted back to human form, now motionless, just as Stiles leaped onto Peter's back and locked his neck tight in a chokehold. He could feel Peter shifting under him, red eyes glowing again as his fangs grew longer.

Derek's right hand, the one he'd rested on Stiles' neck to warm up, moved stiffly. Claws slid into place, and then he thrust it upward, slashing into Peter. The impact knocked Stiles clear and he watched, wordless, as Derek used his bent knee to pivot and slam Peter back against the tree. A shudder went up the thick trunk and the lantern creaked and swayed, far above them all. The other wolves closed in, snarling.

Peter shifted fully and lunged for Derek's neck, sinking his fangs in. Stiles tugged Themma away, surprised at his own strength. Peter's eyes faded from red to blue, blood gushing from the wounds Derek's claws had left – ribbons of flesh and blood everywhere. Derek watched him die, his face shifting from rage to despair to confusion, a match for Peter's own horror.

"Bring them to me," Peter said, sputtering blood.

Stiles looked at Derek and understood. His mouth fell open in disbelief and horror. "You wouldn't."  
  
"Thom is already close to death," Derek said weakly. He isn’t strong enough to regenerate, even with our best healers."

The man kneeling by Thom's body nodded and lowered his eyes.

Derek dragged Peter back against the tall tree, where the lantern still swung from the highest branch, then picked Thom up and laid him at Peter's side, his small head resting limply on Peter's shoulder. He turned to Themma.

"No, not her!" Stiles yelled. "NOT HER.”

"My children will die with me," Peter gasped. "Not for nothing. A stronger light."

"She won't die!" Stiles swore. "The darkness stopped her, but she's part witch and part wolf. When the darkness is gone, she'll be fine."

"Give me my family!" Peter begged, eyes no longer focusing.

* * *

* * *

 

There was a soft knock, which could only be Derek’s; the boy flung down his covers and yelled for his favorite parent.

“DEREK!”

The prince peered around the door, raven hair and thin bronze crown first, thick eyebrows and warm eyes next, and then a smile that radiated light into their world. It was his game with the children, and it pulled Stiles home from the mountains.

Derek lifted the circlet of bone and bronze from his head and ran to them just as Stiles had done, hugging his daughter and Stiles in one large embrace, then rolling over the bed to his son’s wide-stretched arms.

Shebal stood silently watching, and even she was moved, in her own way, by the love Derek showed.

“Nanny Shebal gave them a bit of a fright,” Stiles began.

 _And you too_ , thought Derek, smelling a familiar terror on him.

“Oh did she?” Derek asked briefly, concerned by the pain in Stiles. “This little wolf looks okay now. And his sister’s too smart to be scared.”

“Nanny Shebal believes ‘Hang the Moon’ is appropriate for the five-year-olds in her land.”

“’Hang the Moon in the Northern Sky’?!” Derek spoke so very softly, turning his gaze slowly on Shebal.

“They’re already scared, Der-“ Stiles said very, very quietly, warning him off.

“And so are you. She had no right-” Derek whispered, knowing the kids could still hear him.

Derek paused, his arm tight around his boy. Stiles sat on his daughter’s bed, his own arm around her knees as she rested her face on his forearm.

“Shebal knows so many stories,” Derek said, watching her step slowly, imperceptibly, out of reach of his claws. “She probably got her scary ones and her bedtimes ones mixed up.”

Shebal wasn’t about to take that sort of slur, either as storyteller or nanny, but at the last second she remembered her place in the palace and her purpose.

“It starts out scary, that story,” Derek said in a warmer voice, but it ends up with the Northern Kingdom safe - all the kingdoms protected, and the wolves ever watchful.”

Stiles relaxed enough to join in.

“Your lantern there on the table looks like the one in the northern sky,” he said a comfortingly as he could manage, “the circles of glass are the moon, see? Always lit. And now we’re home too, there’s nothing to worry about. Your sun and moon are here.”

“Do you have more missions?” the boy asked.  
  
“We will,” Stiles said, sounding a bit weaker. “But not for a while.”

“Will the moon come back?” the boy asked.

“Always,” Derek said softly, kissing the top of his head.

“You two need to get to sleep,” Stiles said, gently lifting the girl’s head from his arm, and settling her back into bed.

“They _need_ to be ready,” Shebal said softly.

“A good night’s sleep will do that,” Stiles said.

“For when the lantern darkens again,” Shebal said, louder.

“They will be,” Derek swore under his breath, and waved her out with a jerk of his head.

 ***

“Look!” Stiles said, “your little wolf-pup never even woke up - he doesn’t worry and neither should you.” He kissed the girl on the forehead before Derek tugged him out of the room.

They closed the door to a crack, looking back through the gap at the lamp on the table and the glow it cast over their kids.

“Tell me again why we keep that woman around our kids,” Stiles said, softly but with great irritation.

“She could have killed Peter too, if she’d wanted to, if she'd been there,” Derek said calmly. “We need the witches.”

 

* * *

* * *

Derek knelt and pressed his cheek to Peter's, whispering.

As he stood again, shakily, his face was grimmer and darker than Stiles had ever seen before. Peter's head fell sideways.

The lantern at the edge of the Northern Kingdom flickered and then blazed with light. A horrible noise went up from the darkness as it evaporated. A moment later, the lantern grew even brighter.

"Thom-" Stiles said, looking up at the lantern. It seemed larger and higher up than it had before. The landscape reflected its bright light back up to the starry sky.

Derek turned to Themma's tiny body. Stiles knelt beside him, taking her face in his hands.

* * *

* * *

 

 _Grief, still._ It was all Derek could sense for a moment.

“Come back to me, Stiles.”

Derek took Stiles’ face in his warm hands and it snapped Stiles out of his terror.

“We’ll need Shebal, and her kingdom, when the lantern goes dark.”

“That won’t be for years - decades!“ Stiles argued.

“We don’t know when it will be. The last time we got lucky.”  
  
“The last time, the Wolf King died.”

“And I’m not the Wolf King,” Derek said, embracing Stiles. “I’m not Peter.”

“No, _I am._ I’m the King around here now, just without any of the fangs and fiery eyes and… wolfy defenses.”

“No, you’re not a wolf, thank the stars and sky.”

_END_

_******_

_Epilogue  
_

“Are you scared?” she asked her brother in the darkened room. She was sitting up now.

“No.”

 

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. After all, the lantern glowed steadily on the side table. The moon would come back to their window. Stiles and Derek were home.

“ _I’m_ scared,” she said, standing up. “And I don’t want to be.”

She walked to the window, pushed aside the heavy curtains and looked out.

 

“No moon.”

She leaned closer to the glass, feeling the cold rolling over her cheek. Closer still and the winter touched her, sharper even than Shebal’s bony fingertips, and she gasped. “I see it!  It’s high in the north, and round and bright.”

The moon hung in the night air, impossibly distant and so bright there was no way of making out the lantern, or the tree branch it swung from. 

 

“If you go north, take me with you,” the boy pleaded.

“You’re a baby still.”

“Then we’ll take Derek and I’ll ride his shoulders. And I’m not a baby, I’m just younger than you are.”

“We’ll all go. Stiles and Nanny Shebal too. She knows things.”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 12 Days of Sterek, 2018.
> 
> Beta help from Notepadhalffull (both very fast and very useful!)
> 
> Just a few days ago I ran across some spectacular artwork by [jademerien](http://jademerien.tumblr.com/), which I’ve linked to here because it seems to tap into the same world. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Sun Holder](https://www.deviantart.com/jademerien/art/Sun-Holder-737043562)  
> [Northern](https://www.deviantart.com/jademerien/art/Northern-770953630)  
> [Lantern Wolf](https://www.deviantart.com/jademerien/art/Lantern-Wolf-711526320)
> 
>  
> 
> For interested readers, Stiles' memories are part of a larger story set between "Wolf Black" and this one - which I will get to one of these days.


End file.
